c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ It was a long time ago when film maker George Lucas first took moviegoers to his mythical galaxy far, far away. Since the first Star Wars film appeared in 1977, residents of our galaxy have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tickets and video rentals, and billions more on movie-related products.

Today, pop culture-inspired trends come and go with the speed of a space ship on hyperdrive. Does anyone, for example, still dance the Macarena? Still, Star Wars has become a cornerstone of our collective unconscious. A Newsweek writer even described the fervor surrounding the release of the series’ latest installment in messianic terms, saying it”ranks right up there with the Second Coming of Christ.” He may be right.”The Phantom Menace,”which is the first of three”prequels”to the previously released trilogy _”Star Wars,””The Empire Strikes Back”(1980), and”Return of the Jedi”(1983) _ features the requisite battle scenes, high-tech devices, and visually stunning characters and settings.

But the film also delves deeply into theology, revealing that good kid Anakin Skywalker (who in future films will grow up to be bad guy Darth Vader) was born without a human father, possesses”special powers,”and is the prophesied”chosen one”who”will bring balance to the Force.” Spirituality is certainly no stranger to contemporary film, and Steven Spielberg, a friend of Lucas, has highlighted religious themes in his adult dramas about the Holocaust, slavery and World War II. But Lucas seems to possess a unique ability to blend entertainment and enlightenment in compelling ways, and religious thinkers believe that’s part of why the Star Wars films have been so successful.”Film is probably the most characteristic and influential medium of our current culture,”says theologian Robert Jewett, author of the recently released book,”St. Paul Returns to the Movies”(Eerdmans).”The Star Wars films, which millions of people have seen repeatedly as some kind of pop culture ritual, deal with ultimate matters, and with the redemption of the world.” Lucas, a maestro of movie genres, fills the Star Wars films with a mixture of matinee melodrama, science-fiction fantasy, old-Western gun-slinging, and Samurai swordsmanship.

The films’ theology is equally eclectic, serving up a syncretistic sampling of Christian themes (the battle between good and evil and ultimate redemption), ancient Eastern philosophy (the all-is-one pantheism of the Force), and New Age human potentiality (“Concentrate on the moment,”Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn tells Anakin.”Feel, don’t think. Use your instincts.”).

Lucas also employs timeless mythological motifs such as the hero, the dream, and the journey of transformation, all of which are aspects of something the late Joseph Campbell called the Western world’s”monomyth.””These films are touching on a deeper chord,”says John Wood, who teaches a”Christianity and Film”course at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.”Star Wars says that you have the Force, you have the power, and ultimately you can win over evil.”Perhaps the church today doesn’t communicate redemption and hope to as many people as it once did, and people are grasping for something. As a result, you have all these people spending the night outside the theater waiting for tickets because these films give meaning to their lives, which is kind of scary.” Classic Westerns like”Shane”or Clint Eastwood’s”Pale Rider”feature good guys fighting bad guys. But Lucas transforms this fight into a cosmic struggle between good and evil, says Wood.”In the series, there is the hope that good will win out in the end.” Both the good guys and the bad guys in the Star Wars films have a system of spiritual apprenticeship that resembles Eastern religions’ tradition of masters, or gurus.

In”The Phantom Menace,”Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) instructs a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in the ways of the Force.”Nothing happens by accident,”says Qui-Gon at one point. And according to Lucas, the spiritual lessons sprinkled throughout his films are intentional.”I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people _ more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system,”said Lucas in a Time magazine interview with Bill Moyers about the theology of Star Wars.

Dressed in simple brown robes, the Jedi master and student resemble St. Francis of Assisi. But their continual reliance on their trusty light sabers distances them from the peace-loving saint, and worries some religious thinkers, who say Star Wars films glory in”a mythology of redemptive violence.””The Phantom Menace,”which is rated PG, features no blood and guts, and most of the film’s”deaths”are suffered by inanimate battle droids. Gene Cortez, a Roman Catholic who took his 7-year-old son and another first grader to a Denver preview screening, said,”I see no reason not to take kids to see it.”Still, some people are uncomfortable with the fact that the residents of the Star Wars galaxy often use force to settle their differences.

Jewett and Wood also criticize the elitism of Jedi spirituality.”In the films, the Force is for a select few,”says Wood.”The Christian faith says that anyone who wants to deal with evil has access to the power of good.” The El Cajon, Calif.-based Institute for Creation Research sees more dastardly intentions in Star Wars. In”The Menace of the Force,”a program the biblical creationism advocacy organization has created for broadcast on Christian radio stations, the film series is portrayed as a celluloid Trojan Horse, exposing unsuspecting moviegoers to anti-Christian theologies.”Satan has used very modern tools to ease his New Age lies into the mainstream,”says a narrator in the program.

But most observers see a mix of good and bad theology in the films. Roy Anker has taught a course called”Finding God in the Movies”at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a decade. He says the Star Wars films wrestle with classic Christian themes of evil and redemption.”The films are about the fall,”he says.”They answer the question, `How do we end up with the Evil Empire?’ And the answer, Lucas has said already, is greed. That is also the primal sin in the Garden of Eden.”DEA END RABEY